August Gifted Gorgeousness

 It's (late) time for one of my favourite SALs of the month, Jo's Gifted Gorgeousness - the one stop SAL for all things gifted and giftee! I am, once again, working on several yarn projects that will make for (hopefully great) gifts for friends and family.

For one, I am making progress on the 'A Spicier Life' blanket that I started for my third nibbling, to be born this October. I now finished part 2 of 6 so am technically 1/3rd done with the blanket, but I expect to have to repeat a couple sections to make it a length I am happy with.

 

Still, you can now see all the colours in there, that I will now repeat over and over, in rainbow order. I really like how it's coming together!

The second project is a finish and has a bit of a story. Our neighbors used to have one chicken, called Stracciatella, that was the daughter's first pet. When they were on vacation, we were on chicken duty, making sure she had food and water and was in er shed at night (and sometimes getting some delicious fresh eggs as well!). Well, Stracci got old and sadly, the last time we were watching her, it was very hot, she was very weak, and she passed away. No blame was placed, everyone knew it wasn't anyone's fault, and we are currently chicken-sitting their new flock (three girls and one boy), so everything is well. But I still felt really bad about the whole thing, and then I remembered the Emotional Support Chicken knitting pattern that was making the rounds of the internet a while ago, and I thought to myself - if that's not a reason to knit an emotional support chicken, what is? So I did.

 

Isn't she adorable? She'll be waiting for our neighbors when they get home from the current vacation. Bonus points because I was able to knit her all from stash, using up some yarn that had been waiting for the right project for way too long!

Cup-ybara, 20 hours

We did some more traveling in August, and Cup-ybara with its small size and limited colours makes for such a great travel project. So I took it with me and stitched a lot of capy-butt over the weekend, and then worked some more on the cup when I was back home.

 

This is already more than 57% of the whole design, and I still really enjoy working on it, so I think it will be finished before long!

Japanese Moss Garden - 20 Hours

Currently I am in a mood to stitch and work on everything at once, so progress is very spread out - which, in this case, leads to two updates on one day!

Remember my big bucket list Chatelaine that I started in February? It was going really slowly, since I hadn't worked out a good system yet to mark of what I had done, and I was scared to misscount so everything was double and triple checked. Then, a couple weeks ago, I decided I needed to work out a way to do this, or with a project this size I'd never get anywhere! 

After some tinkering, I actually managed to get the first part into pattern keeper. I can't search for symbols and it's pretty pixalated, but I can see where I am and mark off what I've done, and that's the important bit! Ever since then, it's going much easier and quicker and I'm back to wok on this almost every weekend.

In the last ten hours, I only managed to nish one and a half colours of cross stitch in this 'layer' of the mandala, but now that I got this foundation in I think I can fill it in a lot more quickly.

And with all the silks and hand dyeds, every new colour feels like a new adventure. It's a lot of fun now I got the chart under control!
 

Red Riding Hood - 20 Hours

It's been a while since I worked on Red, but her one year anniversary is coming up and I thought it was a shame there still was no actual red in there, so I went ahead and added the moon, stars, and started on the girl herself. I also did a fair amount more on the big bad wolf and I'm almost done with the upper part of him (there's a tail further down, but it's not quite as chunky as his head).

This is a lot more fun now that there is more to see and do than just blobs of black, so I might get back to her sooner! I ordered the grays I need to finish her face (some of the 'newer' DMC colours) and might do that once they arrive.